Special Operations Group: Salvation Online

Special Operations Group: Salvation Online

Near the end of World War II, Japanese forces under General Yamashita's command buried tons of looted Filipino gold throughout the jungles of the Philippines... awaiting a time when the tide of war would once again turn in Japan's favor. However, only a few months later, Japan surrendered to American forces and General Yamashita was executed for Japanese war crimes. Throughout the decades following the surrender of Japan in 1945, the Philippine Government and U.S. special operations forces have engaged in an ongoing battle with generations of Muslim separatists on the southern-most Philippine islands of Mindanao, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi. SOG: SALVATION is the fictional account of a Marine Special Operations Command ("MARSOC") team seconded to the CIA's Special Operations Group ("SOG") who find themselves racing against a group of Jemaah Islamiyah ("JI") terrorists to recover General Yamashita's lost gold from a jungle bunker recently discovered by a local village farmer. Should ...

Special Operations Group: Salvation was originally drafted as a feature-length script. However, instead of working to raise funds and external support to shoot the film as a $2.5 million - $5.0 million USD feature, the cast and crew collectively decided to first shoot SOG: Salvation as a "mini-feature" (aka short film) to build audience, studio and film festival interest in the underlying story.

More than half the cast and crew were comprised of students and recent graduates from Orlando area film programs as well as former members of the military... most of whom had no prior film credits.

Few of the Filipino characters in the film are actually portrayed by Filipinos. Because the movie was filmed in Orlando, the producers had difficulty finding Filipino actors and actresses for the available roles. In an interesting twist, much of the film's post-production was completed by various film, audio and graphic design professionals in the Philippines.

The film's producer and director, Robert Barnwell, grew up at Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines. While at Subic, Robert was able to watch the US Navy's Seal Team #1 and Marine Force Recon teams train and refine their combat techniques. His experience in the Philippines lead directly to the underlying story of SOG: Salvation as well as the name for his production company, Subic Bay Films.

Actor James (David) Rose, one of the featured actors on the MARSOC team, was actually a member and instructor with the U.S. Marine Corp's elite Force Recon, the precursor to the Marine Special Operations Command which was established in 2005.

One of the film's production assistants, Jacob Centeno Healy, is the son of fallen Navy Seal Senior Chief Petty Officer Dan Healy who perished during Operation Red Wings (the subject of the award-winning film and best-selling book "Lone Survivor"). Navy Seals, such as Jacob's father, are a large part of the JSOFT-Philippines contingent at Camp Navarro, the location where the opening scenes in Special Operations Group: Salvation take place.

The director's signature style is the use of multi-cameras to achieve fast energetic - almost frenetic - edits from shot to shot. To achieve this effect, a minimum of 2-3 cameras were used on each shot (and, sometimes, as many as 6 cameras.) Interesting, no two cameras were ever the same model. Cameras included the Panasonic GH-2, Canon 5d MKII, Canon 70D, Canon 60D, Nikon D7100, and Nikon D5200 among others. Each camera was set to record a relatively "flat" image at 24fps so that the footage could be color-graded in post-production. The result was that the final footage remained consistent despite having been filmed by more than 10 different cameras.

As a result of Special Operations Group: Salvation's limited budget and anticipated distribution, the filmmakers were unable to obtain support from the media and public affairs departments of the Marines, Army or Air Force... despite the considerable number of military veterans on the film's cast and crew. Instead, the Central Florida Council of the Boy Scout's allowed the cast and crew to use Camp Lanoche (Paisley, Fl) as a stand-in for the Joint Special Operations Task Force - Philippines' (aka "JSOTF-P") Camp Navarro in Zamboanga City on Mindanao Island in the Republic of the Philippines.